A plurality of bike carrier designs have been developed including compact strap designs that position a bike on the upper surface of a bumper and rely on strap, buckle and trunk hook components to secure the bike to the body of the vehicle. Examples of this type of bike carrier can be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,118,018 and 5,038,980. In addition to the potential damage to the vehicle created by the hook and buckle components, bike carriers of this type are generally limited to single bike support and also often involve a great deal of set up and adjustment. One advantage of this type of carrier is, however, that they can be made rather compact for shipping and retail shelf space requirements.
There also exists in the art carriers for bikes and other items that include components that attach directly to a vehicle body such as the roof of the vehicle. An example of this type of carrier can be seen in U.S. Pat. No 5,884,824. These type of carriers are applied on a more permanent basis as compared to the hook and strap arrangements described above and thus are typically not easy to remove and instal and also introduce the added possibility of damage to the vehicle body.
The prior art also features bike carriers that are designed to extend out away from the rear end of a vehicle from an attachment point in the bumper region of the vehicle such as from a square hitch common on many vehicles, particularly sports utility vehicles or SUV's. Many of these bicycle carriers include carriers with a relatively lengthy vertical main support bar from the top of which extends horizontal support beams that are provided with clamps or the like to attach to a bicycle generally in an upper region of its frame. Examples of this type of bicycle carrier can be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,476,202; 5,469,997 and 5,373,978. As having to attach clamping components to the more susceptible painted frame regions of bicycles is undesirable, carriers that attach to a rear end of a vehicle also include carriers that are not designed for attachment to the upper or internal frame structure of a bicycle or other wheeled appliance, but are designed for providing an underlying platform on which the bicycle can be positioned. Prior art examples of this latter type of bicycle carrier include, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,025,932; 5,377,886; 5,497,927; and 5,570,825. While these type of carriers avoid the drawback of having attachments extending near or in contact with the bicycle's upper, interior frame structure, they generally suffer from a plurality of other problems, such as there being (1) highly complex in design; (2) not very versatile from the standpoint of being able to accommodate for variations in the desired number of bikes (motorbikes or bicycles); (3) not able to accommodate a large number of bikes; not well suited for ease in loading (e.g. difficult wheel or fork latching or the positioning of handle bars of multiple bikes at a common level, conflicting relationship); (4) bulky to the extent of presenting difficulties from the standpoint of, for example, shipping, retailer shelf space requirements and high customer handling weight; and/or (5) formed of a large number of unique components making for high manufacturing and purchase costs as well as difficulty in customer assembly.